Countess of Scandal (29 page)

"They must have come here to hang him," Will muttered. "And been surprised in their turn."

"Yet the attack came too late, if saving this man was their aim," Eliza said. "And why did they not take the body away?"

"Who has time for such civilized niceties as burial in times like these?" Will said bitterly. He drew his dagger from the sheath at his waist, as if to cut the man down, but then his gaze caught on the crumpled body at the end of the bridge.

As Eliza watched, confused, he walked slowly to the man, kneeling down. She followed, even though her instinct told her to stay where she was, to run back to the cart She had become quite adept at ignoring her instincts of late.

It was not one man but three, a red-coated officer and two Irishmen. From the bloodstains on the stone, she judged there had been a most ferocious battle between them.

"Who is it?" she asked quietly.

"General Hardwick." Will gently rolled over the man's stiffening corpse, and Eliza saw to her horror that it was, indeed, the genial man she had last seen at Dublin Castle, laughing with his wife.

And she remembered the general's pretty daughter, smiling shyly at Will as he led her into the dance.

"He was your friend, I think," she said.

"He was a brave and honorable man who should not have been in the field at his age," Will answered hoarsely. "He said Kildare was a most dangerous place."

"And his family?"

"He sent them to England months ago. They won't hear of this for some time, I fear."

Suddenly, a burst of gunfire exploded from the trees lining the river, a flash of deadly sparks that shattered the eerie stillness. Will grabbed her hand, dragging her down the bank and shoving her under the pilings of the bridge.

"Stay there!" he shouted. "And for God's sake, Eliza, bloody well do as I say this time."

"Will!" She reached for him, but he was gone from her, disappearing back up the muddy bank. He knelt there just at the rise, firing his pistol in response.

Holding on to the jagged stone of the piling with one hand, Eliza drew her own firearm, taking in a deep breath to steady her nerves. She was surely caught, with the unseen attackers ahead and her vulnerable family behind. The river flowed on beneath her, unconcerned at all the violence it witnessed that day, not caring that Will's blood and hers might join its waters, too.

But their blood would
not
flow that day, not if she could help it! Eliza was sick of death, of fear, of the terrible end of dreams. And she was angry, too. Angry with a fiery passion that made her want to howl with it all. To rush into battle and be done, once and for all.

The sunlight glinted off the barrel of a gun, deep in the shadow of the trees. A mere flash, but that was enough. She leveled her gun at that spot and fired. The deafening explosion, the kick of that hot metal in her hand, was deeply satisfying.

"Eliza!" Will shouted, firing off his own weapon. He fell with his back to the riverbank, reloading. "What are you thinking, woman?"

"I'm thinking two shooters are better odds than one," she said. "I'm thinking I will not just sit here and die, and I won't let you die, either."

He stared at her, and she was sure he would push her farther under the bridge, shout at her to run away. But he just handed her his gun, taking hers as she reloaded.

By the time they ran out of ammunition, the hail of gunfire from the woods had ceased, as if their attackers fled. Eliza slumped down in the dirt next to Will, her eyes shut as she listened closely for any sign they were still there. Waiting. There was nothing, not even the rustle of leaves, the snap of a twig. Even the birds were silent

Long, taut moments crept past as she thought of her mother and sisters and prayed they had fled. The rush of pure, hot energy was drained away, and she was exhausted.

"I think they've gone," Will whispered, a strange, tight sound to his voice.

Eliza turned to him, opening her eyes to find that his wound had reopened in the right Blood spotted his shirt, and his lips were pressed together in a white line.

"Oh, Will," she groaned. She quickly unlaced his shirt, peeling it back from his shoulder.

Some of the stitches were torn, the flesh around them red and angry, blood oozing through. She pulled out her handkerchief, pressing it against him to stop the flow.

"Why didn't you say something?" she said.

"It hardly seemed the right time to pause during a gun-fight and say, 'Excuse me, Eliza dearest...'"

"We'll have to find a place to mend it" She stooped down to dip the cloth into the river, wiping away the blots of fresh blood. "You're not hurt anywhere else, are you?"

"Not at all, thanks to you, my warrior goddess."

"I doubt any goddess was ever so frightened out of her wits!"

"You didn't seem frightened at all."

"I wasn't" Eliza dragged in a ragged breath. "Not until now. You could have been killed!"

"Eliza!" she heard her mother say, and she glanced up to find Katherine peering down at them from the bank above. Her hem and shoes were stained with mud and dried blood "Has William been shot?"

"Mama, you should have stayed away," Eliza protested.

"Nonsense. The villains are quite gone. I saw their shadows creeping away, like the bloody cowards they are."

"Mama!" Eliza cried, almost laughing at the ridiculous sound of that curse in her mother's cultured voice. "No, he's not shot, but he opened his wound again."

"Such a nuisance. Here, let me see." Katherine scrambled down the bank to kneel beside them in the dirt, peering beneath Eliza's handkerchief.

"Ladies, really," Will said, trying to draw his shirt over his chest

"Oh, William," Katherine said sadly. "lf you think the sight of a bit of bare male flesh is going to give me the vapors after what I saw on the bridge, you are quite mistaken. We'll have to fix those stitches, but we can't do it here."

"We can't go into Rossmorland now," Will said. Despite Katherine's words, he managed to pull his shirt and coat back into place, wincing as the cloth slid over his shoulder.

'Indeed," Katherine said. "But Houghton Court is not far. I heard that family fled weeks ago. Hopefully the place is deserted, and we can stop there for the night"

"Can we afford to lose the time?" Eliza asked.

"No, we cannot" Will said. "I vowed to get you all safely to Dublin."

Katherine peered down at his shoulder. "William, I fear we have little choice in the matter. Eliza, help me get him back to the cart"

"I can certainly walk," Will insisted, shaking them away. *T tell you, it is nothing. We have to press on."

He scrambled up the riverbank, hurrying back over the horrible bridge as Eliza and Katherine ran to keep up with him. They went back to the cart where Anna and Caroline waited, watching them with white, tense faces. Caroline sat in the back while Anna held on to the horses' bridles.

"Where do we go now?" Anna asked, her voice subdued and sad. How much had she seen? She always did seem to be watching just at the worst times.

"To Houghton," Katherine said. "We can rest there for the night"

"No, toward Dublin," Will insisted. "We should be to the next town soon after nightfall"

"Denton stubbornness," Katherine said, shaking her head. "I tell you, William, you will be no good to us if you faint from blood loss."

"Denton stubbornness is nothing at all to that of the Blackballs " Will muttered. "And I
never faint."

Chapter 25

Despite her deep tiredness, Eliza could not sleep, even in the perfect stillness of the deepest part of the night. They had taken refuge for a few hours in the woods, near a burned-out farmhouse on the road to Dublin. There her mother had repaired Will's stitches, and they had all fallen into fitful sleep, but Eliza was too wary to join them. She was alert to every birdsong in the trees, every twig crackling.

Will could not sleep, either, she knew. He lay beside her on a pallet of blankets under the cart, his breath quiet as he stared out from their meager shelter. It was so hard now to think of the past or future, or anything more than that one, single moment

"Will?" she whispered. "Are you asleep?" "No," he answered. "But you should be. We'll have to cover many miles tomorrow."

"I'm not the one injured and needing rest" "My shoulder is fine; I promise. Your mother is an excellent physician."

"But will it be fine if we meet with another gunfight?"

"We won't, and if we do, I will be very careful." He turned his head to smile at her in the darkness. "I don't want your mother to scold me again."

Eliza laughed despite herself. "Nor do I." She propped her head on her arm, gazing down at him in the lacy patterns of moonlight "Will?"

"Yes?"

"I am very sorry about your friend General Hardwick."

He just nodded, as if he could say nothing.

"Earlier today you said we all have regrets."

"Of course we do," he said. "We're all forced to see the truth of ourselves in times such as this, even when we would rather not."

Even if they would rather hide and pretend? Surely that would be the prudent course, the course that would allow them all to go on with their lives. But hiding had never been in her nature. Nor had it ever been in Will's.

"I do regret that a dream that seemed so wonderful has turned terrible in so many ways," she said.

"But you can't regret what led you to those convictions."

"No, I can't regret that Freedom should be every human's right But are convictions, abstract ideas, worth pain?" She frowned. "I don't know."

"Is duty worth it?"

She glanced down at him, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I spent all my life hearing of duty," he said, turning his face back to the night "Duty to my family, to England, to our estate. It seemed everything."

And that was the tale of their whole Ascendancy world,
the one Eliza had fought against Had imagined she
could
fight against, underestimating the strength of its hold. "Do you think that still?"

"It was all I knew, until I met you "

"Me?"

"I loved the way you spoke of Ireland, Eliza. You made me see my home in a new way, the true beauty of it that was all around us. You made me think it a source of pride to be part of it all, not something shameful to deny, as my family does."

Had he really thought that, when her younger self peppered him with tales and lectures, fired by her own youthful enthusiasm? She laughed softly, lying down beside him again. "I thought you were just trying to steal kisses."

"I was, of course. But I also listened, more than you could know."

"Yet you still went off with the Army."

"Well, duty is a tenacious thing, after all. We're all bound to it—even you, Eliza."

And so she was. "Yes. I did marry Mount Clare when I was told to, and I tried to live my life as I was told I should. Perhaps it would have been better if I simply went along with that life and all it entailed."

"And perhaps it would have been better if I had rebelled," he said in a bitter tone.

Eliza's head was spinning, so she hardly knew what was up or down, right or wrong. "Oh, Will. What really happened to you while we were apart?"

"I saw a man flogged," he said flatly.

"What? But that is nothing, surely. I saw such terrible things myself."

"But you did not order it done, did you?"

Eliza sat up in shock. "You ... ordered it?"

"Yes. Soon after I rejoined my regiment after leaving Moreton, we captured a man suspected of being a Defender, of knowing some of their strategy in Wexford. He refused to give us the names of his cohorts, and the order came that we were to publicly flog him as a warning. To show no mercy. I said such a thing was likely to make the populace even
more
recalcitrant, not less, but the order was repeated."

"You... you did not flog him yourself?" she whispered. She shook her head hard, but the image of Will wielding a bloodstained whip would not be dislodged. That was just the sort of brutality and injustice she fought against

"Of course not But I sent the order through, I had the proclamation read, and I witnessed the punishment. The man nearly died, and the next day in retaliation, an Anglican bishop's house was sacked and burned."

"So your warning was quite right. It made the rebels more recalcitrant."

"I took no comfort in being right."

What
was
right? Eliza did not know any longer. She lay flat on her back, staring up at the slats of the cart as she felt Will watching her. She thought of the burned village, of pregnant Annie and her missing husband. Of her mother and sisters, forced out of their home, of General Hardwick and his family. So much pain on all sides, and the divisions between them blurred.

His hand touched hers in the darkness, the merest light brush. She curled her fingers around his, holding on to him. They said nothing else. What
could
they say? They just lay there, so close, but so very, very far apart